


Temporary Reassignments

by Kris



Category: Eureka, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:01:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kris/pseuds/Kris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eureka is the strangest thing that Evan has ever dealt with, and he’s seen space vampires in drag.  He’s heard the sentence ‘glowy ascended non-sex touching’ used as a closing argument.  He lives on the lost city of Atlantis for crying out loud.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Temporary Reassignments

When the SGC reassigned him Evan Lorne fought tooth and nail, that is to say, he locked himself in his quarters on Atlantis and wouldn’t come out until Colonel Sheppard pointed out that a) this was not what manly Air Force men do when confronted with change and b) it was only a temporary assignment. So it was, with grim determination and an irritated scowl that rivaled Dr. McKay’s the day he learned there was not a single coffee ground left on Atlantis, Evan made his way to Eureka, Oregon. He’s never even heard of Eureka, Oregon. He doesn’t know why they need an Air Force Major with a current assignment to play Sheriff in some small town for vacation relief of all things. He doesn’t even get vacation!

***

No one has heard of Eureka, Oregon. The gas station attendant had looked at him like he was going insane when Evan had asked.

***

There’s no Eureka, Oregon in the maps that he buys from the second gas station.

***

He stops at the side of Highway 95 and tries the phone number the SGC had given him.

“You’ve reached Sheriff Jack Carter, I’m currently putting out fires left from the fire breathing dragon, if you need immediate assistance, please press ‘0’”

“That’s not exactly a professional voicemail,” Lorne mutters, but he gamely presses ‘0’.

“Yeah, Fire Breathing Dragon,” a woman’s voice says after a few rings and a beep. In the back ground a voice that sounds like Sheriff Carter’s shouts ‘Jo’ the way McKay shouts Sheppard’s name when the Colonel is doing something stupid. He was going to hang up, but then there’s the beep and Evan remembers that he used to hate that one second of voice mail before a hang up. Before Atlantis when he used to have voice mail that is.

“Yeah, this is Lieutenant Colonel Evan Lorne, USAF, I’m a little bit lost on Highway 95, I can’t find the turn off and the last three maps I bought haven’t been very helpful in that regard. You can reach me at –" He doesn’t finish the message though, because there’s a Jeep with the word ‘Sheriff’ scrawled over the side that pulls out of nowhere and then alongside him. The man who leans out is blonde, and has a toothpaste ad white smile. He’s also singed around the edges and his hair is on fire.

“You’re hair is on fire,” Evan points out.

“Shit,” the man shoves his hand into his hair until Evan takes pity on him and reaches in through the car window and smothers the feeble attempt the hair is making at bursting into flames. “Sorry, I’m, we had a –"

“Fire breathing dragon?” Evan finishes for him with a raised eyebrow. The man grins again and offers his hand.

“Sheriff Jack Carter,” he has a firm handshake, Evan uses it as an opportunity to smother the ember on the man’s uniform sleeve. He has a feeling that Sheriff Carter probably gets into trouble the way McKay and Sheppard do.

“Lieutenant Colonel Evan Lorne, USAF,” he says.

“Right, good, you want to leave your car here, or do you want to follow me in?” the Sheriff asks.

“I’ll follow you,”

***

Driving through an invisible wall had been kind of trippy, but not unusual. Unusual is the great big, fugly, dragon in the middle of the road, Jack’s Jeep fits easily over the curb and onto the sidewalk, Evan is forced to leave his car in front of a café. There’s a man with an Australian accent shaking his finger at the dragon telling it ‘no burning things’ in a very firm voice.

There’s a woman, whose voice sounds familiar, saying that she doesn’t care what the Dragon meant to do, it burned up the furniture store, someone was going to have to pay for the damages.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Sheriff Carter mutters. He pulls up alongside the arguing pair and the dragon and pulls out a sheet of paper that he gives to the man.

“A ticket, for what?” the man demands. 

“Well, flying an unlicensed animal for one, starting fires in non-permitted areas and breaking the sound barrier in a school zone for another. Oh yeah, and then there’s the part where you let your dragon fly around and burn things. Taggart, you’re lucky no one got hurt.”

“He didn’t mean to Sheriff,” the dragon does look oddly apologetic.

***

Eureka is the strangest thing that Evan has ever dealt with, and he’s seen space vampires in drag. He’s heard the sentence ‘glowy ascended non-sex touching’ used as a closing argument. He lives on the lost city of Atlantis for crying out loud.

***

“Why does everyone keep calling me Andy?” Evan asks. Deputy Lupo and Sheriff Carter both look a little shifty around the eyes, as Carter, dressed in Civvies, heads to his car for his two week vacation.

“No reason, no reason whatsoever,” Director Nathan Stark says with his exceptionally charmingly white smile. “And on that note, you would be wise to not visit the Sheriff’s home in the near future until Fargo has finished a little bit of re-coding.”

***

Nathan Stark is probably one of the most level headed men that Evan’s ever met, and he can’t believe he’s saying this, may Dr. McKay not yank out his heart and roast it over a bed of sweet potatoes, but Nathan is definitely prettier than John Sheppard.

Evan comes to this conclusion while staring up at Nathan’s face while Nathan is looming over him and Evan is flat on his back on the director’s desk. 

“You know what I want?” Nathan’s voice is silky and dangerous, his eyes are dark with arousal and Evan sighs a bit heavily.

“One day,” Evan says with a great amount of aggravation “I’m going to follow up on all this UST you seem intent on suppressing.” Then he punches Nathan in the head, knocking the man down on the ground. From the door of Nathan’s office, Fargo looks in wincing. Deputy Lupo rushes in and pulls a dazed Nathan away.

“Phase 3 of pollen study got a little out of control?” Fargo offers timidly. Evan hands him the handcuffs and Fargo sighs and puts them on himself. He’s surprisingly dexterous for such a complete goof. 

***

It’s only been one week into his coverage as Sheriff for Eureka. Douglas Fargo has succeeded in making Director Stark, Nathan, lose control of his faculties and molest Evan four times in three days. Jim Taggart accidentally released a herd of gasoline drinking, steel eating zebras on main street, the Paulson twins had lost something they were calling an Octo-Chicken on level 3 for three terror filled hours and a very, very pissed off Dr. Dactylos had managed to turn everything in his cell, including himself, into gold which strangely had made Evan relive the horror filled experience of Dr. Jackson raging at him for the Unas mining incident.

He can not wait until he gets to go home to Atlantis where things make sense.

***

There’s a release of pressure, or something that feels very much like that, when it finally happens.

He meets Nathan at Cafe Diem at 6 o’clock, after shift and checking to make sure that Lupo is actually taking over the watch duties for the evening. He left a copy of her favourite magazine, ‘Heavy Guns and When to Use Them’ on her desk as a thank you.

Nathan is a little out of breath, when he arrives, his suit is a little rumpled. Evan understands that there was a project review one of Dr. Parrish’s non-lethal pulse riffles so he understands the, quite frankly, terrifying hair do.

“Hey,” he says. Nathan looks a little wild around the eyes and maybe like he’s going to bolt from the table when the bell over the door to the Cafe opens and Dr. Blake walks in. There’s some strange eye contact between the two of them, kind of the way Sheppard and Ronon talk and Nathan forces a smile onto his face.

“Hey,” he says back, mostly managing not to sound too mulish. Evan can’t help but grin, it’s kind of adorable really and recalcitrant scientists he can totally handle. By the time dessert arrives, Dr. Blake is no longer chaperoning from the counter and Nathan’s eyes are dark, the smile around his lips is a little predatory. 

Evan is working really hard at not reacting to Nathan in public when Nathan drains the last sip of wine and his eyes are full of question. Evan thinks back to the feeling of Nathan’s body stretched out over his.

“I think we should probably head back to your place to finish this conversation,” Evan says.

***

“So, things were pretty quiet around here while I was gone?” Sheriff Carter is looking around the Sheriff’s office suspiciously, like maybe Evan threw a rug over a hole in the floor or something. Which he didn’t do, but he definitely saw Deputy Lupo adjust that floor mat over the scorched floorboards from the laser rifle misfire last week.

“Yeah, pretty quiet, no fire breathing dragons if that’s what you’re wondering.” Evan says. He’s practically vibrating, the Apollo is in orbit waiting to beam him up. Lupo coughs ‘zebras’ under her breath but Evan ignores her.

“Okay,” Carter says. Evan gladly hands him back the badge and heads out.

***

“So I know we said our goodbyes, and this is obviously bad timing from the look of things,” Nathan says taking in the disaster zone the Genii had left of Evan’s room when they stormed the place while he’d been gone. Evan can’t help but notice Nathan sounds very, very tired, or maybe it’s the sound quality of the video feed coming through skype via wormhole, either way, he really wishes he could be face to face with him. “But if I were to take a hiatus from Global Dynamics, and you were to take a vacation, would you...” the feed beeps at him and Evan hangs his head a little, time is running out and he’s going to get cut off right away. 

“I don’t have leave for a while,” Evan says, and then he smiles. “But I have a better idea.”

***

“I don’t care what you think you know,” Dr. McKay shouts. “The time/space continuum doesn’t behave that way!”

“I don’t care what you think you know,” Nathan shouts back, “but I’ve personally experienced it and I can assure you that it does!”

Evan leans against the lab wall next to Colonel Sheppard and shares an amused grin with him as they watch their two scientists going at it.

/end


End file.
